Procurement categories are assigned automatically to all items/purchase units when a district uses the Inventory module. If a district doesn't use the Inventory module, all items/purchase units will have a procurement category of "Unassigned" but this will not affect any functionality or usage of the software.
Procurement categories are based on the a products GPC code which comes directly from the GDSN and generic databases in most cases. There may be rare occasions where an item doesn't have this information provided by the manufacturer in GDSN. GPC codes classify products by grouping them into categories based on their essential properties as well as their relationships to other products. GPC offers a universal set of standards for everything from a car to a litre of milk, and for everything from camping equipment to footwear, home and appliances to toys.
CNCentral automatically assigns items/purchase units to the different procurement categories to make the onboarding process more streamlined for Inventory customers. By categorizing products by procurement category, CNCentral users can easily sort inventory units by their respective category and view only those inventory units they are interested in viewing such as "Frozen" or "Bakery". There are 11 procurement categories available and they are:
- Unassigned
- Dry Goods
- Frozen
- Perishable
- Bakery
- Dairy
- Fresh Produce
- Specialty
- Non-Food
- Small Wear
- Food Packaging
The "Unassigned" category means an item/purchase unit didn't have a GPC code and therefore CNCentral didn't know how to categorize it for procurement purposes. While CNCentral automatically assigns procurement categories to all items/purchase units, a district administrator (DA) user can override the assigned category from the Item Database>Item Detail>Purchase Units, Vendors>Vendor Detial>Purchase Units, or Inventory>Item Detail. Any change made to one of those modules will update that change throughout.